


stargazer

by Shadaras



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:14:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22515325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: Michael Burnham was seven years old when she got her first telescope.
Relationships: Gabrielle Burnham & Michael Burnham
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7
Collections: Femflash February 2020





	stargazer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/gifts).



When Michael was seven years old, the Burnham family lived on the Kekada-Sadim Station. The station housed scientists and their families and all the people needed to support such a populace. Michael’s school—Delta Primary, whose mascot was Dillon the Doberman; she wore a bubble helmet and always had a big smile—was run by many exceedingly educated educators, and Michael’s favorite was Mx. Ai.

Mx. Ai taught science. And not just any science, but _astronomy_. “Every class,” xie told the students sitting in front of xir on their first day, “is going to make a star-chart of their very own, and learn about what makes stars special.” Michael came home bright-eyed and fascinated, and Gabrielle and Mike Burnham exchanged fond looks over the dinner table and let her keep talking, telling them about how Mx. Ai demonstrated the holographic sketching system they would be learning to use as they made their star-charts.

(Later, Gabrielle told Mike that she remembered the robotics project she’d first worked on that sparked that same intensity and joy in her. “We’re raising a little scientist,” she said, and Mike wrapped his arms around her, soft in his own joy.)

Two weeks later, Michael came home chattering about how in history she was learning about the ways people first started studying the stars, and how Mr. Kuvak had promised he’d bring in a telescope to show them next week. “He said we’d all get a chance to try it!” Michael said gleefully, not even pretending to eat dinner, and Gabrielle couldn’t fault her. She knew that enthusiasm all too well; even now, when work felt like banging her head against a wall repeatedly, the _kind_ of work she was doing was so far past anything she could ever have imagined as a seven-year-old, and that was a glory of its own.

So when Michael’s class took their first-semester field trip to the station’s holodeck planetarium, Gabrielle signed up as a chaperone. After everything Michael had been saying about it—and looking it up herself—she wanted a first-hand view of Michael’s enthusiasm. Getting to know more of the class was a plus; she was usually too busy to pick Michael up. As the class entered the planetarium itself, built in a dome and decorated with stars and nebulae, Michael tugged her along by one small hand, barely able to contain her glee.

Before they even left the planetarium’s show, Gabrielle sent a message to Mike, telling him _I’m getting Michael a telescope_. Michael’s rapt wonder as images of Earth’s sky, Vulcan’s sky, and the sky of many other homeworlds and densely populated planets filled the ceiling above them was beautiful, and Gabrielle felt tears prick at her eyes as the music swelled and nebulae danced around them and Michael gasped in awe.

Michael started talking as soon as they left the planetarium, and didn’t stop for the rest of the afternoon, talking about what it looked like to see the stars change to show how people kept inventing more and more sensitive instruments, and how cool it was to see the different views of stars through light and x-ray and gamma ray and all the other spectra there were. Gabrielle made dinner (well, reheated leftovers from last night) with Michael at her side, perched on the counter and waving her hands in the air to describe her joy.

A week later, Michael opened the telescope’s plain packaging and Gabrielle knew she’d made the right decision. Michael squeaked and hugged both her parents tight before immediately carrying the telescope to the exterior window of their space station rooms. “They’re so bright,” Michael said, wonderingly. “And there are so many of them! And the telescope can show me all their colors!” Without lowering the telescope, she said, “Mom? Does the telescope have programming to identify all the stars it’s looking at?”

Gabrielle laughed a little. “Dear one, there are too many stars in the galaxy—even just known space!—for that. But—” she picked up the instructions that Michael had entirely ignored, glad she’d found a child’s telescope that prided itself on being intuitive “—this says many planets and stations have local records we can load in, if you want it.” She wasn’t sure if Michael would, after all her fascination with how old Earth culture had to learn the stars with no more tools than their own minds and laborious notes.

Michael thought about it, even lowering the telescope as she did, and then turned and looked at her with such a look of stubborn determination that Gabrielle’s heart flooded with simple joy at the young scientist she was already raising. “No,” Michael said. “I’m gonna learn them myself.” She looked back at the window and all the stars, and then added, “But a star-chart would help.”

“I’ll show you where those are on your PADD,” Gabrielle said, standing up and going to join her daughter at the window. “And then you’ll have them any time you need.”

At first, Gabrielle had wondered if the love for telescopes might pass, but night after night Michael kept looking out the window, learning first the brightest stars and then their dimmer cousins. She’d draw her own constellations onto the windows in marker, and even went and learned the constellations of Earth, studying star-charts and wondering what it might look like to see them in person. Gabrielle told her it was very likely she’d have that opportunity, if she kept up her science work; there were still many science colleges and research institutes on humankind’s home planet.

Once Michael had memorized Earth’s constellations, she pulled up Vulcan’s stars and started learning them too. Gabrielle spent an evening when she had spent too long staring at tiny parts listening to Michael tell her about how even Vulcans named their constellations for more than simple, logical, shapes: The Sehlat rose over the southern hemisphere’s spring nights, and The Abacus was a star cluster near their north. She sketched them in the air as she spoke, and Gabrielle tried to see the shapes her daughter was describing, loving her enthusiasm even when she couldn’t always keep the constellations in her mind’s eye.

When they moved to Doctari Alpha a year and a half later, Michael found the star-charts for Doctari Alpha and—upon learning there weren’t any official constellations—set about studying the stars with an eye towards finding and naming her own. Gabrielle sat up with her on any night she could, looking at connect-the-dot diagrams of stars with her daughter. “This one looks like the Vulcan’s salute,” she said, tracing the long lines and a short stub connecting to the bottom. “What should we call it?”

Michael traced the lines, settling her own hand over it to see how it matched. “Prosperity?” she said, looking up at Gabrielle. “I guess we could call it ‘The Salute’, but that doesn’t sound as good.”

Gabrielle smiled at her daughter. “Prosperity does sound good,” she agreed. “A blessing and a wish for us all.”

“This next one is the Butterfly,” Michael said, pointing at a cluster that, to Gabrielle’s eyes, didn’t look anything like the insect. “Through a telescope, there’s a nebula behind it that looks like a butterfly’s closed wings. From the side,” she added, watching Gabrielle’s confusion.

Gabrielle changed her mental angle a little, and then nodded. “I think I see it.”

“That’s all you need,” Michael said happily, and Gabrielle smiled as her daughter went right on into an explanation of how weird Terran constellations are and how minimal the connection between the actual shapes of the stars and the images associated with them could be.

And she listened, again, as she always would, so that her daughter knew that her desire to share information was a good and wonderful thing, and never something to be afraid to do.


End file.
